Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as “fine arts”

Brooklyn-based Artist Jennie C. Jones Wins $50,000 Wein Prize

By goodblacknews on January 22, 2013

Artist Jennie C. Jones
Artist Jennie C. Jones

Studio Museum in Harlem is awarding its Wein Prize, one of the most lucrative in contemporary art, to Jennie C. Jones, a 44-year-old Brooklyn-based painter and sculptor whose work – which she describes as “listening as a conceptual practice” – centers on music.

The prize, with a $50,000 award, has been given every year since 2006 to established or emerging African-American artists. It was started by George Wein, a founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, in honor of his wife, Joyce Alexander Wein, a longtime trustee of the museum who died in 2005.
l1060599The prize, whose announcement was delayed by Hurricane Sandy, will be given at a museum gala on Feb. 4. Thelma Golden, the museum’s director and chief curator, said in an interview that Ms. Jones was chosen “not only to celebrate the rigor and strength of her practice, but also because of the thinking about what this amazingly generous prize could do for her at this point in her career.”
Ms. Jones, who will have a solo exhibition in May at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, has been featured in several shows over the last decade at the Studio Museum and in Chelsea. Her work often uses the language of Minimalism to explore, and sometimes  appropriate, avant-garde jazz and other modern music.
“I kept seeing these amazing parallels in ideologies for both disciplines, especially in jazz and abstraction,” Ms. Jones has said. “Conceptualism allows these different media to occupy the same space.”
article by Randy Kennedy via nytimes.com

Black Arts Movement Works Acquired by Brooklyn Museum

By goodblacknews on January 18, 2013
UrbanWallSuitJae Jarrell’s “Urban Wall Suit,” from 1969, recently bought by the Brooklyn Museum.

As the curator of American art at the Brooklyn Museum began work on an exhibition to coincide with next year’s anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, she happened on a trove of works from the Black Arts Movement, the cultural arm of the black power movement of the 1960s and ’70s, the New York Times reported.

Noticing that the collection bridged two generations of works already among the museum’s holdings — by earlier African-American artists like John Biggers, Sargent Johnson and Lois Mailou Jones, and by their contemporary successors — the curator, Teresa A. Carbone, persuaded the museum to acquire it.

“Even at a time when people are more aware of the established canon of black artists,” Ms. Carbone said, “these artists are only now gaining the recognition they deserve.”

The collection — 44 works by 26 artists — was assembled by David Lusenhop, a former Chicago dealer now living in Detroit, and his colleague Melissa Azzi. About a dozen years ago the two began buying pieces they felt were prime examples of the Black Arts Movement.

‘African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde’ at the Met

By goodblacknews on December 21, 2012

Masks in Malvin Gray Johnson’s painting “Negro Masks” (1932). (Librado Romero/The New York Times)

It’s easy to take for granted just how quickly art travels today, whether by JPEG or shipping crate. For a sense of how slow things were just a century ago, and how much could get lost en route from one continent to another, visit “African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde,” a small but highly compelling show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s one of several exhibitions timed to the centennial of the Armory Show of 1913, where many New Yorkers caught their first glimpse of Modern art from Europe (much of it influenced by African sculpture).

Meticulously researched and thoughtfully presented by Yaëlle Biro, the Met’s assistant curator in the department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, it tells the story of African art’s early reception in the United States with exceptional candor. And it makes clear that Americans received Modern art and African art as a single import, derived from French and Belgian colonies, distilled in Paris and presented on these shores by a few tastemaking dealers and collectors.

African Art to Shine at Miami’s Art Basel December 6-9

By goodblacknews on December 1, 2012

Mickalene Thomas: Qusuquzah, Une Trés Belle Négresse 2, part of the 2012 Art Basel

The 11th annual art carnival known as Art Basel Miami Beach is set to kick off next week and will feature Art Africa Miami as its cultural hub. The Miami Beach Convention Center will be hosting the showcase for more than 50 contemporary artists from the global African Diaspora from Dec. 6 to 9.  Typically, Art Basel (which was founded in 1970) pulls from more than 250 leading art galleries from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, exhibiting modern artworks by more than 2,000 artists. Until 2011, when Neil Hall — owner of TheUrbanCollective’s Art Africa Miami — stepped in, the main show hadn’t had black galleries represented.

Contemporary African, African-American Artwork Presented in NYC

By goodblacknews on December 1, 2012
Philip Kwame Apagya, Come on Board, 2000/2003<br />Courtesy of The Walther Collection
Philip Kwame Apagya, Come on Board, 2000/2003
Courtesy of The Walther Collection
Arthur Walther,64, is a German-American art collector who began collecting artwork and photography in China in the early 1990′s. Following his retirement as a general partner at Goldman Sachs and the founding partner of the firm’s German operations, Walther focused on his collection.  The wave of modernization and economic reform flooding through China resulted in artists recording and analyzing the changes that were occurring. As China competed more in the global market, Walther found himself shying away from their artists and collecting more work from contemporary African artists.

“A number of these [artworks] overlapped continuously,” Walther said at the exhibition of his latest exhibition, Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, which is being shown at the Chelsea Arts Building in New York. “I collected Chinese art very slowly. In the nineties and early 2000, [Chinese art was] a real examination and investigation by the artist of society and of the transformations and of their histories. Which before didn’t happen to that degree [because art] was all propaganda and political.”

“Fore” Exhibit at Studio Museum in Harlem Features Emerging Artists of African Descent

By goodblacknews on November 29, 2012
“Joyce” by Jennifer Packer

Fore presents twenty-nine emerging artists of African descent who live and work across the United States. Born between 1971 and 1987, the artists inFore work in diverse media, often blending artistic practices in new and innovative ways. While some artists create large-scale oil paintings, others draw on top of photographs, or combine sculpture and two-dimensional work. More than half of the works in Fore have never been exhibited publicly; some are site-specific and react directly to the Harlem neighborhood and its social landscape.

Fore is the fourth in a series of emerging artist exhibitions presented by the Studio Museum, following Freestyle (2001), Frequency (2005–06) andFlow (2008). This exhibition traces the development of artistic ideas sinceFlow, taking into account social, political and cultural conditions in the United States. Whether gathering and assembling everyday objects, referencing urban architecture and economies, or using film and video to mirror the transmission and reception of information through social media, the artists in Fore emphasize that contemporary art is deeply tied to its location, time and historical context. This exhibition investigates questions at the core of the Studio Museum’s mission, exploring art’s relationship to U.S. and global communities.

perFOREmance, two three-day performance presentations in December 2012 and February 2013, provides a platform for the new and commissioned performances in Fore.

Organized by Lauren Haynes, Naima J. Keith and Thomas J. Lax, Assistant Curators at the Studio Museum, Fore continues the Studio Museum’s mission as the nexus for artists of African descent, locally, nationally and internationally, and for work inspired by black culture.

Narcissister “Mannequin” Photo: Tony Stamolis
Firelei Báez / b. 1980, Santiago, Dominican Republic; Lives and works in New York, New York
Sadie Barnette / b. 1984, Oakland, California; Lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Kevin Beasley / b. 1985, Alexandria, Virginia; Lives and works in New York, New York
Crystal Z. Campbell / b. 1980, Prince George’s County, Maryland; Lives and works in New York, New York and Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Caitlin Cherry / b. 1987, Chicago, Illinois; Lives and works in New York, New York
Jamal Cyrus / b. 1973, Houston, Texas; Lives and works in Houston, Texas
Noah Davis / b. 1983, Seattle, Washington; Lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Abigail DeVille / b. 1981, New York, New York; Lives and works in New York, New York
Zachary Fabri / b. 1977, Miami, Florida; Lives and works in New York, New York
Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle / b. 1987, Louisville, Kentucky; Lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Steffani Jemison / b. 1981, Berkeley, California; Lives and works in New York, New York
Yashua Klos / b. 1977, Chicago, Illinois; Lives and works in New York, New York
Eric Nathaniel Mack / b. 1987, Columbia, Maryland; Lives and works in New York, New York
Harold Mendez / b. 1977, Chicago, Illinois; Lives and works in Chicago, Illinois
Nicole Miller / b. 1982, Tucson, Arizona; Lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Narcissister / b. 1971, New York, New York; Lives and works in New York, New York
Toyin Odutola / b. 1985, Ife, Nigeria; Lives and works in San Francisco, California
Akosua Adoma Owusu / b. 1984, Alexandria, Virginia; Lives and works in Alexandria, Virginia
and Ghana
Jennifer Packer / b. 1984, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Lives and works in New York, New York
Taisha Paggett / b. 1976, Los Angeles, California; Lives and works in Chicago, Illinois and Los
Angeles, California
Valerie Piraino / b. 1981, Kigali, Rwanda; Lives and works in New York, New York
Nikki Pressley / b. 1982, Greenville, South Carolina; Lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Jacolby Satterwhite / b. 1986, Columbia, South Carolina; Lives and works in New York, New York, and Provincetown, Massachussetts
Sienna Shields / b. 1976, Rainbow, Alaska; Lives and works in New York, New York and Rainbow, Alaska
Kianja Strobert / b. 1980, New York, New York; Lives and works in Hudson, New York
Jessica Vaughn / b. 1983, Chicago, Illinois; Lives and works in New York, New York
Cullen Washington Jr. / b. 1976, Alexandria, LA; Lives and works in New York, New York
Nate Young / b. 1981, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania; Lives and works in St. Paul, Minnesota
Brenna Youngblood / b. 1979, Riverside, California; Lives and works in Los Angeles, California

Fore is made possible thanks to Leadership Support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Major support provided by Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support provided by the Ed Bradley Family Foundation.

information via studiomuseum.org

Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum Opens “African Presence In Renaissance Europe” Exhibit

By goodblacknews on November 9, 2012

Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid “The Three Mulattoes of Esmereldas” (1599) is one of the works in “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe,” at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

BALTIMORE — In a fall art season distinguished, so far, largely by a bland, no-brainer diet served up by Manhattan’s major museums, you have to hit the road for grittier fare. And the Walters Art Museum here is not too far to go to find it in a high-fiber, convention-rattling show with the unglamorous title of “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe.” 

Visually the exhibition is a gift, with marvelous things by artists familiar and revered — Dürer, Rubens, Veronese — along with images most of us never knew existed. Together they map a history of art, politics and race that scholars have begun to pay attention to — notably through “The Image of the Black in Western Art,” a multi-volume book project edited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates Jr. — but that few museums have addressed in full-dress style.

Nigerian Sculptor Nnenna Okore Impresses at Contemporary African Art Gallery

By goodblacknews on November 8, 2012

Raised in Nigeria, now living in the United States, the young sculptor Nnenna Okore makes a strong impression in this solo show of new work in New York’s Contemorary African Art Gallery. Her primary materials are organic recyclables — burlap, jute rope, paper — along with small, cylindrical, fingerlike ceramic forms. In several cases she attaches the ceramic pieces to sheets of burlap that have been stiffened with resin and molded into undulating curves. The effect is decorative, the basic format a reminder that she spent an apprentice year working in El Anatsui’s studio in Nigeria around the time he was developing his pieced-together and draped metal “fabrics.”

More interesting, because more her own, are wall sculptures that take her closer to abstract natural forms. Some are open, seemingly fragile networks made from dye-soaked jute threads that twist and intertwine, like tendrils or root systems.

Other pieces, shaped from handmade paper, have the furrowed texture of tree bark or leathery skin. One extraordinary paper piece, dyed pink and brown, seems to burst from the gallery wall like a giant dried and withered rose. Like all of Ms. Okore’s best work, this is a tough, unlovely image, about when recycling passes into disintegration.

article by Holland Cotter via nytimes.com

Detroit Museum Holds Exhibition of Forty-Four Busts of President Obama

By goodblacknews on November 7, 2012
Artist - Ted Ellis 02

Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History is holding an exhibition called “Visions of Our 44th President“.  It features 44 contemporary African-American artists using different styles and mediums of choice, all adding to a blank bust of President Barack Obama.

Tate Modern Gallery Opens the Door to Africa

By goodblacknews on November 4, 2012

Meschac Gaba's Museum of Contemporary African Art

Meschac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art. Photograph: Nils Klinger

Since the building of the great modern art museums in New York, Paris and London, the narrative of 20th-century and contemporary art has been told, by and large, through the stories of the great European and North American cities.  But the Tate has announced it is time to look further afield. “There is not a crisis in British or European art,” said the Tate director, Sir Nicholas Serota, “but we are conscious art is being made across the world and those areas outside Europe and North America cannot be regarded as the periphery.”

artist Otobong Nkanga

Tate will reflect its new international focus through a two-year programme of activities focused on Africa, beginning on 24 November. Events will include performance works in the new Tate Tanks by Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga and Angolan Nástio Mosquito. Next year, Tate Modern will show an extensive work that it has recently acquired by the artist Meschac Gaba, from Benin. Titled Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997-2002, and in 12 sections or “rooms”, it acts as a playful, questioning museum – while highlighting that there is, in fact, no such thing as a museum of contemporary African art.